Contents

History

Situated on a Roman road, the area was a convenient place for the barbarians to settle once the Romans got bored and left the island. Naturally, the road attracted an ample supply of poultry, and the people could always follow it someplace else if their new home proved to be a dump.

Or so they thought. The Scots invaded without warning in the 1130's, but for unknown reasons decided to let the English administer things once again twenty years later, without ever officially giving the town up. Despite the uncharacteristically peaceful nature of the Scots' departure, the English built a wall around the place — just to be safe — and control all entry and exit points with gates. The inhabitants pondered their confinement and abandonment by their countrymen for centuries, and built up an immunity to Bubonic Plague due to frequent outbreaks. Despite these constraints, Doncaster flourished, growing exponentially from a hamlet of pretty much nobody to a village of several dozen more.

Due to the gates, seventeenth century Doncastrians found themselves unable to resettle away from the town unless they paid to leave, a practise that the English Parliament determined in 1628 to be cruel and unusual punishment. By comparison, the English did not outlaw hanging, drawing and quartering until the mid-1800s. Doncastrians prompty expressed their eternal gratitude to Parliament by siding with Charles I against Parliament in the English Civil War. Natives continue to defend this seemingly trecherous act on the basis that his dad was Scottish.

Life for those from Doncaster improved significantly following the Royalists' victory. The dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and in particular the town's rich coal reserves, offered employment opportunities to all those who had yet to master the art of living off of the English. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the proportion of families who properly clothed and fed their kids skyrocketed. Doncaster's roads, trains and waterways offered more opportunities for its inhabitants to up sticks for England than ever before. The unbearable smog from the mines, factories and trains cleared large swaths of land in whatever direction the wind blew. This land, combined with Doncaster's proximity to England, gave the locals the distinction of being the first ever Scottish people to practise cricket. This pastime was discontinued in the mid-20th century for unknown reasons. At a similar point in time, Doncaster made arguably its greatest contribution to the English language by inventing the word boycott.

Economy

The realisation in the 1980s that coal could kill polar bears and turn the Celtic parts of Britain into tropical paradises prompted English people to demand that the Welsh and Scottish stop burning it. Milk Snatcher's successful realisation of that goal forced Doncaster to once again rely on its reputation as an easy place to get out of in order to attract passing custom. It has recently forged productive trade routes with explorers from the Amazon rainforest, but the job market remains fragile – one of the town's main employers is the ominously named Next.

Education

Doncaster is host to several educated people. London-born Englishman Ed Miliband, for instance

Despite the improvements to quality of life that the Industrial Revolution brought to the area, Doncaster's wee ones have a lot of things going against them. First and foremost, the Scottish government does not spend a penny on educating the children of Doncaster. Notwithstanding that, constant exposure to meaningless strings of letters, numbers and symbols such as B&Q, DFS, KFC and A1(M) is hardly ideal for kids trying to learn the alphabet, while their natural inclination towards Scottish mannerisms is a further obstacle to their ability to learn the English language. The town's Scottishness is less of a disadvantage in terms of numeracy, but when the first number the nippers hear each morning is 18,100 unemployed, they understandably lose heart at not being able to count that high. One teacher in Doncaster realised that this was holding his students back, and to help them he invented a system of mathematics which only requires the user to be able to count to one.

Sport

Doncaster's best claim to sporting fame is its women's football team, Doncaster Belles. Founded by the organisers of a raffle at a men's game, the Belles won the top flight twice in the '90s, despite the adversity of having to stop playing when the boys turned up, their stadium being burned down, and finally being demoted to the Second Division simply for having the temerity to come from Doncaster.

Politics

Generally considered as Labour heartland, (primarily because it is the only place in Scotland that the SNP doesn't field candidates in), Doncaster is distinguished from its English equivalent of Hartlepool by the fact that it did not elect a monkey in three consecutive mayoral elections. The shiny faced chap in a red tie above is one of the town's MP's. His main political role is to argue with another shiny faced chap in a blue tie about who is more in touch with ordinary working people. The pair used to argue with a shiny faced chap in a yellow tie, but he was invited for tea and biscuits by toffs in mid-2010, and has seldom been seen since.

Twinned with

References

New employment opportunities are scarce. Given that no sane person would leave employment in the area without already having a signed, sealed and delivered contract elsewhere, the concept of references is an alien one.